State Champ Radio tech
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TikTok announced “the ultimate Taylor Swift in-app experience” on Friday (April 19), a way to “connect Swifties with exclusive and first-of-its-kind features.”
TikTok is certainly not the only platform to join with Swift in her promoting her new release, The Tortured Poets Department. Many iHeartRadio stations played the whole album the moment it came out (plus a song from it at the top of every hour), for example, while Spotify launched a three-day “library-themed art installation” to celebrate the album in Los Angeles.
What’s different about TikTok’s announcement: The platform is embroiled in an ongoing licensing dispute with Universal Music Group, Swift’s distribution partner. Because the two sides have been unable to reach an agreement, official recordings from UMG’s artists have (mostly) been removed from TikTok. Swift’s music was absent for a time, but a large chunk of it reappeared on the platform last week.
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Now, not only is the superstar able to circumvent UMG’s TikTok embargo, she is also getting additional promotional help from the platform. “With multiple first-of-its-kind features, fans can dive into the album with playlists to create with, as well as challenges to unlock exclusive artwork for their profiles, and the opportunity to be featured in a Fan Spotlight carousel,” TikTok’s announcement notes.
This is all but guaranteed to make some UMG artists — those who have developed devoted TikTok followings, or had success marketing music on the platform in the past — jealous. “TikTok is mostly used as a new-music discovery tool — discover a clip on TikTok, listen to it on a DSP,” a music lawyer told Billboard last week. “So those who are trying to get their music discovered are the most concerned” about being unable to promote new songs on the app.
Due to that concern, some artists with viral hits are trying to come up with workarounds to allow their songs to remain on TikTok.
Swift’s TikTok partnership, despite the UMG ban, was a display of her power in the music business, as an artist who moves as many units in a year as some entire label divisions. There had been significant speculation about what her return to the service meant — whether it implied a carve out in her contract allowing her to do a direct deal with the social platform, or whether her original contract had always contained such a provision. With today’s news, some of the parameters of that agreement have come more into focus, in terms of the promotion and marketing push that TikTok is providing for the new album.
TikTok has returned to the bargaining table with Universal Music Group (UMG), but a fast-tracked Congressional bill that could result in the platform being sold, or, as a last result, banned in the United States may reach President Joe Biden’s desk before those negotiations are finished.
A source familiar with the talks says Bytedance — the Chinese company that owns TikTok — has returned to the bargaining table with UMG after the label group pulled its music from the social media platform at the end of January citing its refusal to address three “critical” issues: “appropriate compensation for our artists and songwriters,” “protecting human artists from the harmful effects of AI” and “online safety for TikTok’s users.”
It’s unclear whether any progress has resulted — neither UMG nor TikTok will comment — but ByteDance currently faces a more urgent, existential issue now that the Speaker of the House of Representatives has attached what’s being called the TikTok national security bill to the foreign aid package for Ukraine and Israel that is expected to move quickly through Congress. The House may vote on it as early this weekend and the Senate is expected to act quickly. If it passes in both houses, President Biden has promised to sign it immediately.
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Officially titled The Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, the proposed legislation was drawn up after White House national security and intelligence leaders briefed House lawmakers on the potential dangers that TikTok, which is used by 170 million Americans, poses to the nation.
What the TikTok National Security Bill Does
If Biden signs the bill into law, ByteDance will have approximately a year from its enactment — the original bill gave it just 90 days — to sell TikTok to a buyer in a country that the United States does not consider a foreign adversary. If ByteDance, which has ties to the Chinese Communist Party and is subject to its government, refuses to divest itself of TikTok or does not meet the deadline, then the app could be banned from being downloaded or used in the United States.
Rick Lane, TikTok Coalition.org leader and child safety advocate, says the TikTok bill “is moving forward very quickly. The language between the House and Senate is so close — they are millimeters apart, and I think agreements are being made to bring them together. Unless something drastic happens, I don’t see this bill’s momentum slowing down, no matter who’s on the other side. That is why adding it to the foreign aid bill makes sense.”
At a time when Congress is mired in ideological infighting, particularly among Republicans, the House of Representatives moved with remarkable speed to mark up and pass the bill and send it to the Senate.
Despite a deluge of calls and messages from TikTok users protesting the legislation, the House passed it, 352 votes to 65, on March 13 — less than a week after national security and intelligence officials held a classified briefing for an executive session of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. A music industry source familiar with activity on Capitol Hill tells Billboard that, before the briefing started, “members and staffers devices were taken away, and the committee room’s AV systems and the like were removed.” Following the morning briefing, the committee marked up the bill that afternoon and voted unanimously to advance it to the full House of Representatives.
A classified intelligence briefing was also held in the Senate and prompted similar remarks of concern. Republican senator from Missouri Eric Schmitt told Axios that the Chinese-controlled platform’s “ability to spy is shocking.”
“We don’t know exactly what was briefed,” says the music industry source. “But what is absolutely crystal clear is that whatever has been presented to Congress members by the intelligence community is clearly driving this. You don’t see — particularly Congress members — reacting with that kind of dispatch and unanimity.”
A ‘Once-in-a-Lifetime’ Alarm
“This is really a once-in-a-lifetime kind of alarm,” the source adds. “People who have been around the Hill for decades don’t remember there ever being this level of concern.”
An unclassified 2024 Annual Threat Assessment issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) in February may offer a glimpse of these security concerns. The assessment reported that “China is demonstrating a higher degree of sophistication in its influence activity, including experimenting with generative AI. TikTok accounts run by a [People’s Republic of China] propaganda arm reportedly targeted candidates from both political parties during the U.S. midterm election cycle in 2022.”
In response, a TikTok spokesperson referred Billboard to its written response to the ODNI, dated March 15, which asserts that the social media platform “regularly takes action against deceptive behavior, including covert influence networks throughout the world, and has been transparent in reporting them publicly. TikTok has protected our platform through more than 150 elections globally,” the response continues, “and is continuing to work with electoral commissions, experts, and fact-checkers to safeguard our community during this historic election year.”
In addition to the intelligence briefings, Billboard obtained a slide presentation that one Capitol Hill source says has been shown to staffers for over 40 senators. The presentation cobbles together previously published articles, analyses and reports about TikTok’s alleged dissemination of disinformation and propaganda to much of the same demographic that uses the app for music discovery. (According to a 2024 Pew Research Center report, 56% of U.S. adults 18 to 34 use the platform and 52% of the users in this age group have posted a video to the platform.)
‘TikTok Is a News Organization‘
As one tech policy expert says, “TikTok is a news organization. Trends are indicating that up to 40% of adults 18-to-29 will be getting their news from TikTok in 2024. It’s their CNN or Fox News or MSNBC.”
One of the first slides, titled “TikTok Has Rapidly Evolved From an Entertainment to a News Platform, Enormously Expanding Its Influence on The U.S. Population,” includes a graph built from Pew Research Center data that shows 43% of TikTok users regularly got their news from the platform in 2023, nearly double the 22% that did so in 2020. Only X (59%) and Facebook (54%) were higher. And nearly a third of that 43% were adults under 30 years of age.
Although music’s role in TikTok’s alleged dispersal of disinformation is not examined in the presentation, the tech policy expert says it’s definitely a factor. A 2023 report released by the rights management startup Pex in February revealed that 85% of TikTok videos contain music, more than YouTube (84%), Instagram (58%) and Facebook (49%), and the tech policy expert says that music played on the platform often functions as an emotional gateway to propaganda.
“The power of music is what draws people to social interaction,” the source says. “They’re taking music that gets people excited and, for instance, following them with horrific videos — and the interaction of those data points creates this powerful tool to affect policy.” The expert adds that TikTok’s algorithm enables the platform to essentially tailor its approach to each user. “It’s no longer just one size fits all; the ability now is to take visual cues, music and sound and target each individual with what sets them off — and they can do that on a massive scale.
“The argument in favor of TikTok is that Meta and Alphabet are collecting data from even more people, but they are not based in an adversarial country,” the expert continues. “There’s another key difference as well. TikTok sends you videos that they think you are interested in no matter what. Most young people want to be influencers. In order to be an influencer on TikTok, you have to follow what’s trending, so your video is blasted to more people. You tag along with feeds. In the policy realm, if they want to influence public policy, your view is going to be whatever direction that feed is going in.”
A TikTok spokesperson responds: “There is absolutely no evidence to these assertions. We have clear rules prohibiting deceptive behaviors.”
‘They Deserve It’
The music industry’s view of the proceedings in Washington is mixed. The perspective of artists and songwriters is arguably best expressed by David Lowery, the artist rights activist and frontman for the bands Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven, who also was one of more than 200 creators that, in early April, signed an open letter to tech platforms urging them to stop using AI “to infringe upon and devalue the rights of human artists.”
“The rates TikTok pays artists are extremely low, and it has a history — at least with me — of using my catalog with no licenses,” Lowery says. “I just checked to make sure and there are plenty of songs that I wrote on TikTok, and I have no idea how they have a license for those songs.”
As a result, Lowery says that while “I’m kind of neutral as to whether TikTok needs to be sold to a U.S. owner, the bill pleases me in a general way because I feel that they’ve gotten away with abusing artists for so long that they deserve it. I realize the bill doesn’t punish them for doing that,” he continues, “but that’s why a lot of musicians feel they really deserve it.”
The consensus among label executives is that TikTok is not going anywhere, but were the app banned in the United States, they wouldn’t spill many tears. In early April, Billboard reported that two months after UMG pulled its music from TikTok, its market share and chart appearances had not been greatly affected. And though numerous UMG artists have devised workarounds to maintain a presence on TikTok, one senior label executive says, “When you’re looking at the competitive set for TikTok, you see a migration to YouTube, Instagram and Snap. And those platforms see a real opportunity, so they’re starting to lean in. The absence of TikTok would just mean migration to other platforms and, frankly, because those platforms monetize better, even if you lose a significant chunk of your audience, you’re still going to make more money.”
$8.7 Million For Lobbyists
Capitol Hill sources say ByteDance has enlisted a small army of lobbyists to keep TikTok on U.S. mobile devices. In 2023, ByteDance spent $8.7 million on lobbyists, according to the nonprofit government transparency organization OpenSecrets. That’s almost double the $4.9 million it dropped in 2022, although a TikTok spokesperson attributes the year-to-year increase to “a unique, one-time higher expenditure in the third quarter of 2023 that reflects the vesting of Restricted Stock Units related to the launch of our U.S. buyback program.” (Data for 2024 lobbyist expenditures were not available at publication time.)
That 2023 outlay was the fourth-highest amount spent on lobbyists by a tech company that year, behind Meta ($19.3 million); Amazon.com (nearly $19.3 million) and Alphabet (almost $12.4 million). In 2019, ByteDance spent less than $1 million on lobbyists.
Lobbyists hired by ByteDance include Rosemary Gutierrez, the former deputy chief of staff for Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington, who chairs the Senate Commerce Committee — which will review the TikTok legislation before a floor vote is taken — and Kellyanne Conway, former senior counselor to President Donald Trump. Conway is reportedly considering joining Trump’s reelection campaign, but last month, Politico reported that she was working for the conservative Club for Growth to lobby on TikTok’s behalf.
One of the Club for Growth’s biggest donors is billionaire Jeffrey Yass, who owns 15% of ByteDance, which is reportedly worth roughly $40 billion. Yass’ trading firm, Susquehanna International Group, is also the largest institutional shareholder — 2% — of Digital World Acquisition Corporation, which merged with Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of the former president’s Truth Social app, and took it public in late March. (The New York Times reported that it’s unclear if Susquehanna still owned the shares at the time of the IPO.)
Given Yass’ support of Trump, it’s not shocking that, after attempting to ban TikTok during his time in office, Trump has said on social media and in interviews that though he still considers TikTok a national security risk, he has reconsidered banning the platform. One reason he has cited is that such a move would benefit Meta and its social media app Facebook. Trump has made no secret of his enmity for Meta’s chairman/CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, which banned him in 2021. (Trump was reinstated in 2023.)
The Taylor Factor
The news last week that Taylor Swift had restored her Taylor’s Version songs to TikTok in the run-up to the April 19 release of her new album The Tortured Poets Department led to speculation that the superstar singer-songwriter — who has often spoken out for artists’ rights — could be weaponized by TikTok in its standoff with UMG. In Washington, however, TikTok Coalition leader Lane says, “Taylor Swift being or not being on TikTok has never come up in any meeting I’ve been in on Capitol Hill.” He sees Swift’s return to the app as “a business decision” that’s no different than President Biden’s and Congress members’ presence on the app, or even UMG’s continued talks with TikTok. “It doesn’t diminish the strong bipartisan/bicameral support within Congress and the White House that TikTok is a clear and present danger to the U.S. national security and needs to be divested from ByteDance,” he says.
Trump’s sway over the GOP has some on Capitol Hill predicting that passage of the TikTok National Security bill in concert with the foreign aid package is not a slam dunk. “It’s hard to say how it’s going to play on the Republican side,” says the music industry source familiar with the Capitol Hill proceedings. “Because while they’re feeling pressure from the former President on one hand to oppose the bill, they are also feeling heat from their constituents to support it.”
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Source: NurPhoto / Getty / Take-Two
Even with games like Grand Theft Auto V, the forthcoming GTA 6, and the NBA 2K franchise under its belt, Take-Two Interactive is the latest video game publisher that will reduce its workforce and drop projects.
Spotted on The Verge, Take-Two announced it will lay off “approximately five percent” of its global workforce and scrap several projects already in development.
In an SEC filing published Tuesday, the company said it was “streamlining its organizational structure, which will eliminate headcount and reduce future hiring needs.”
Take-Two says that its “cost reduction program” will see the company be subject to charges up to $200 million, hoping to save $165 million a year.
The website reports that Take-Two’s downsizing efforts should be “largely completed” by December 31st, 2024.
As for the workers, a 5% reduction in the workforce would amount to around 579 out of the company’s 11,580 employees, which Take-Two disclosed in a previous impact report.
There is no word on what departments the layoffs will happen in or what projects Take-Two will be cutting. GTA 6 will feel the sting of these cost-cutting measures.
Of course, the news is not sitting well with gamers who tire of hearing about layoffs in an incredibly profitable industry.
Oh, and we can’t forget that Take-Two Interactive is still working on purchasing Borderlands developer Gearbox from The Embracer Group for $460 million.
“They’re doing this a year out from releasing the sequel to the most commercially successful game of all time,” one user on X, formerly Twitter, said.
You can see more reactions in the gallery below.
2. Follow his lead
9. It better not
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Source: Ramsey Cardy / Getty / MKBHD
YouTuber Marques Brownlee, aka MKBHD, has caused quite a stir with his recent review of Humane’s AI Pin.
Regarding reviews on your favorite tech items, the newest smartphones, smart cars, electric vehicles, and other new gadgets, no one is more revered than MKBHD. The tech enthusiast has become the go-to for all things tech, and his YouTube page has become the premiere destination for reviews, boasting over 18 million followers.
So it’s no surprise that his opinions can make or break an item’s reception by the masses; Brownlee’s latest review is a case in point.
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Humane’s new AI Pin arrived, and it’s not receiving any glowing reviews from anyone. However, MKBD’s in-depth analysis, in which he said it was the “worst product I’ve ever reviewed…for now,” has caused quite a stir on X, formerly Twitter.
In the video, Brownlee ripped the wearable tech, slamming it for being “too much of a pain to use” and noting that it was “bad at almost everything it does.”
The popular YouTuber said the device’s responses to commands were often slow and incorrect because the generative AI chatbot technology was not up to snuff.
He slammed the device’s battery life, pointing out that in his review, it could only last a couple of hours during heavy use.
His thoughts on the camera were no better, adding that photos taken by the Ai Pin “look pretty bad” and videos “look even worse.”
He Did Have Some Positive Things To Say
But his review was all negative; he did like the Ai Pins’ ability to save notes quickly and how it could be used for first-person videos, adding, “As a brand new product and a team trying to make something new — that I respect, I respect the attempt.”
But in the same breath, he also said the device has “a long way to go” before it hits the usable stage and that “never buy a product based on the future promise of updates to it.”
The Backlash From His Review
Following the release of his review, there was some backlash, most notably from internet personality Daniel Vassallo. In a post on X, Vassallo called out Brownlee, saying, “I find it distasteful, almost unethical, to say this when you have 18 million subscribers. It’s hard to explain why, but with great reach comes great responsibility.”
“Potentially killing someone else’s nascent project reeks of carelessness. First, do no harm.”
In response to Vassallo’s assertions, Brownlee wrote, “We disagree on what my job is.”
Of course, Vassallo’s comments opened up a discourse. Some pointed out the power of MKBHD’s opinion, and one person alluded to how he “bankrupted a company in 41 seconds.”
Some defended Brownlee. Philip DeFranco said in a YouTube video that Vassallo’s post on X was “one of the dumbest, braindead takes” he had ever seen.
MoistCr1TiKaL said Vassallo’s response to MKBHD’s review was “dogsh*t” and helped potential buyers steer clear of a “turbo ass” product.
It definitely sounds like Vassallo is a hater.
You can see more reactions in the gallery below.
1. Just saying
3. Exactly, is this where we are at now?
The Rights, a synch licensing clearance platform, launched publicly on Tuesday (April 16) following a beta test period that involved participation from two major music companies, Kobalt Music Group and Believe. Founded by a team of synch and licensing veterans with funding from a motley cast of investors, executives and entrepreneurs, the company is trying to build a better mousetrap that simplifies a time-consuming process and, possibly, reduces the threat from emerging technology.
Created in partnership with Dequency, a blockchain-based synch licensing company, The Rights purports to be a useful tool to handle the increasingly high volume of synch licensing requests from small productions like limited-release films, podcasts, content creation and concert footage. The goal is to make the process easier at scale by allowing a track with multiple rights holders to be cleared in a single transaction.
“We can match the agility of production music libraries and one-stop catalogs, yet offer the pricing flexibility, consent rights and customized terms required to maintain the premium value of commercial music,” said Tres Williams, founder/CEO of The Rights, in a statement.
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Williams is a former executive vp of business affairs at iHeartMedia who had similar duties at Thumbplay, a subscription music streaming service acquired by Clear Channel — later renamed iHeartMedia — in 2011. Williams is joined at The Rights by president Keatly Haldeman, who is founder/CEO of Dequency as well as co-founder/CEO of Riptide Music Group; and chief business officer Scott Marshall, another former executive at both iHeartMedia and Thumbplay.
The Rights has raised $7.5 million to date from the likes of film and TV production company Spyglass Media Group; Endeavor Entertainment; venture capital firm Borderless Capital; blockchain developer Algorand; Grit Capital Partners; iHeartMedia chairman/CEO Bob Pittman; and Elon Musk’s siblings: entrepreneur Kimbal Musk and Tosca Musk, the latter a filmmaker and co-founder of video streaming platform Passionflix.
Despite an explosion in opportunities for placement in streaming content, synch license revenue has grown at a slower rate than subscription streaming royalties. The global synch license market, as measured by the IFPI, grew 4.7% to $632 million in 2023 — a figure that covers recorded music only, not music publishing, and excludes production music libraries. That’s less than half the 11.2% growth in subscription revenue. In the United States, synch revenue grew 7.4% to $411 million last year, according to the RIAA, well behind the 10.6% growth in subscription revenue.
Now, synch licensing faces a threat from the sudden rise of artificial intelligence-created music. The Rights warns that AI-created music could grow into a multi-billion-dollar business in less than a decade, “siphoning revenue away from the artists and writers of the world’s most-desired songs,” it said in a press release. While technology has transformed everything from music distribution to marketing, the process of clearing synch licenses remains “untouched by tech efficiencies,” Haldeman said in a statement. “Our goal is to create infrastructure for the industry to make the clearance process smooth for both rights holders and licensees.”
Artificial intelligence and user-generated content music tool company Mayk has announced the launch of its latest product, popstarz.ai. With the promise of helping anyone playfully assume the identity of a popstar and let a user sing their favorite song, the company hopes to revolutionize karaoke and strengthen the artist-fan relationship. Explore Explore See latest videos, […]
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Source: Momodu Mansaray / Getty / Keanu Reeves
It’s not often that we get perfect castings in films, but according to X, Paramount got this one right.
Multiple sources are telling The Hollywood Reporter that Keanu Reeves and his iconic voice will bring to life fan-favorite character Shadow The Hedgehog in the highly anticipated film Sonic 3.
The news first reported by The John Campea Show comes after Paramount had a strong showing at CinemaCon last week in Las Vegas, where attendees saw some early footage from Sonic The Hedgehog 3.
In the footage, attendees were happy to see that Jim Carrey is back as Dr. Robotnik, who is now depressed and overweight after being defeated by his long-time nemesis, Sonic.
Robotnik regains his mojo after creating Shadow, who is, in every sense, the dark version of the Blue Blur and has similar abilities.
Following a lackluster trailer that first introduced a hideous Sonic The Hedgehog design that Twitter bullied the studio into changing, the first movie raced into theaters in 2020, earning a whopping $319 million at the box office and becoming one of the last theatrical blockbusters right before the COVID-19 pandemic shut the world down.
Sonic 2 arrived in 2022, introducing more characters like Tails (Colleen O’Shaughnessey) and Knuckles (Idris Elba), earning $404 million.
Reeves continues to stay quite busy in Hollywood, most recently starring in John Wick 4, bringing back Neo in The Matrix: Resurrections, reprising his role as John Wick in the upcoming spinoff John Wick Presents: The Ballerina, and a role in Aziz Ansari’s Good Fortune.
Social Media Users Chime In On The Casting
Following the announcement, X, formerly Twitter, celebrates Reeves casting in the film.
“THIS IS GONNA BE THE GREATEST MOVIE OF ALL TIME RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH,” one X user wrote.
Another post read, “perfect casting.”
Some fans are disappointed because they wanted Star Wars star Hayden Christensen to voice Shadow.
If you ask us, this sounds like a win to us. You can see more reactions in the gallery below.
2. We will be seated for this epicness.
3. Sonic fans we are eating
4. We would love to see it.
7. Howling
9. Yes, yes they do.
10. Continue to cook
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Source: NurPhoto / Getty / X
If you got a blue checkmark courtesy of X, Elon Musk wants the world to know so.
Spotted on The Verge, premium X users are finding out they can no longer hide their blue checkmarks and are sharing a notification they are receiving informing them of the new X, formerly Twitter policy.
Last summer, Elon Musk’s lame version of Twitter made showing your blue checkmark optional after X introduced a new subscription feature, giving subscribers the once highly coveted sign that they were part of an elite group.
It’s unclear why X is now doing it, but the timing comes after many celebrities and notable people who vowed to never pay for X to keep their blue checkmarks, now have them after X began “gifting” subscriptions to users with high numbers of verified users.
Those users who received their blue checkmarks began hiding them after announcing to their followers that they had not paid for them.
So this feels like Elon Musk being a douchebag and telling his team to make that move to spite those people who are spiting him and his company.
The social media formerly known as Twitter has been a hot mess since Elon Musk reluctantly purchased it. He changed the name and then rolled out the subscription platform, which was immediately abused by scammers who used to verify fake accounts and fool people.
Some people with blue checkmarks became the target of online harassment and mass blocking before giving users with more than a million followers blue checkmarks.
X is an ongoing mess, but we will stick beside it until the wheels fall off like everyone else.
Walmart Restored
From premium headphones to laptops and cameras to 4K TVs, instead of buying your brand new tech, consider getting refurbished tech from Walmart Restored.All products are tested to be working like-new, inspected and cleaned to have a renewed appearance, while you can also have peace of mind with one-year warranties and 90-day return policies. So you can rest easy that the tech — including from top brands like Apple, Sony, Samsung, Nikon, HP and others — you’re buying is certified and reliable. However, if it’s not, then you can get your money back without any hassles or problems. It’s really a win-win for everyone, including for yourself, Walmart and the environment.
